Wonderful illustrations, and a fun story. Should have been as popular as the Wizard of Oz. Unfortunately pages 268-278 seem to be missing?

This was the second book of the Oz serious, a sequel to The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, pub. 1900. I read many of the Oz books as a child--the first book I ever read on my own was The Scarecrow of Oz. It's fun to revisit them, especially now that I'm equipped to read all sorts of meanings into these books which Baum may never have intended. There are some who consider "Wizard" to be a metaphor of the class struggle. In this light, "Marvelous" may be read as a problem in gender identity. The Emerald City is conquered by a band of girls, who force all the men to do housework. Of course, the men nearly perish under this grueling workload. I don't wish to inject a spoiler here, but the plot reaches its climax in a Marvelous case of transgender switching. "But I'm not sure I WANT to be a girl!" I don't know if Freud ever read this book, but I bet he would have loved it. Or maybe not...